


But Whichever Way I Go, I Come Back to the Place You Are

by maplemood



Series: girl!Peter [8]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Female Peter Quill, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reunions, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:30:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: Slowly, slowly, they solidify. Not exactly memories, just murky, soft and rotting around the edges impressions that anchor her in this place where anchors shouldn’t exist, because there’s nothing to be anchored to.Nothing but what you bring with you, maybe.





	But Whichever Way I Go, I Come Back to the Place You Are

Sh— _shit._

That’s all she thinks, for hours and hours afterwards.

_Shit._

_Shit._

Can’t even say it. Just the thought, and some half-dissolved corner of her brain in some fully-dissolving corner of—where, wherewherewhere—nowhere? Everywhere? Can’t get her bearings, can’t see for shit, can’t feel...around her, can’t feel…

Anyone. No one else…

Drax.

Mantis.

Rocket.

Groot.

That jumpy spider kid.

Gamora.

_Gamora._

+

_I told you—_

_Shit._

_Told you—_

+

_I love you._

+

Where is she?

_Where is she?_

Where—

+

For a long time, Pete isn’t.  For a long time (ages—light years, probably) she circles the drain of a massive black emptiness, more breathless and freezing than she ever remembers being in all the brushes and one-night hookups with death that came before. She doesn’t have lungs this time, to wheeze and collapse in the vacuum. No skin to frost and blister in the cold. For an age, she has nothing but their names, tiny pinpricks of not-light and not-warmth hanging heavy in the space where her gut might’ve once been.  

Slowly, slowly, they solidify. Not exactly memories, just murky, soft and rotting around the edges impressions that anchor her in this place where anchors shouldn’t exist, because there’s nothing to be anchored to.

Nothing but what you bring with you, maybe.

 _Wherever you go, there you are,_ Mom reminds her, frowning over the report card slapped down on their kitchen table. Her _Hi! My name is Meredith_ nametag, the one with tiny hearts dotting the i’s, wobbles, crooked, on the pocket of her uniform. Guilt sucker punches Pete between the eyes.

_Baby, I know you can do better than this._

_I hate that story._

Gamora’s fingers link through hers, squeeze.

_I love that story._

_Not bad, little sis._ And she swears that’s the last time she’s letting Mantis anywhere near the cockpit, let alone the controls, but the other woman’s face is as beaming and wide-open as the sky they almost dropped out of. She darts her arms around Pete, squeezes her _hard._

 _I flew the ship!_ she gasps, still unbelieving. Louder, _You called me sis!_

 _Sure did,_ Pete chokes. _Hey, hey. Easy on the ribs._

 _You’re good with her,_ Gamora says later, when she and Pete are both sprawled across her bunk, tallying up the credits from their latest job.

_Must be all my general unselfish love for everyone._

_Mmm. Must be._

_I told you—_

Pete circles.

_Red._

Did he ever, even once, call her by her actual name? If he did, she’s got no memory of it.

 _What you gone and done now? Huh?_ Phantom blow or not, her head jolts forward with the force of it. _Didn’t freeze my life away in the black just so you could follow me down._

Another slap. This one catches her across the cheek; she tries socking him back, or at least blocking the next punch. No luck. It connects in a spray of blood and spit.

 _You think I planned this?_ She still isn’t talking. Doesn’t matter. Thoughts scream loud enough in the emptiness. _‘Cause I missed getting my ass beat that much? You’re fucking delusional, old ma—shit!_ The imprint of his knuckles rattles through her jaw, into her teeth.

Her jaw. Her teeth.

 _Nah, girl. Ain’t givin’ you that much credit._ The same fingers grasp her jaw again, thumb over the already-blooming bruise. _Come on now. Get moving._

 _Oh my God._ She feels it. The press of his fingers against her skin. Her head pounding. Her legs and arms loose, floppy, boneless as star jelly and weak as a baby’s. Her body, punch-drunk, creaking, whole.

 _No time for that._ He jerks at her chin. _Hustle._

And, just like that, Pete is.

+

“So,” she says. “Either I’m dead or you’re not really here.”

Her voice leaks out brittle, shaking. She almost _sees_ the words drop from her mouth, sharp little spun-glass syllables fluttering through the air. Pete shifts her feet on ground that most definitely isn’t really there; ripples form around her boots but it’s like she’s stuck suspended in midair, or on some endless, glassy plain that’s itself stuck in a perpetual sunset. The light filtering down is all pink and orange, cotton candy and orange juliuses.

It sparks off the red of Yondu’s eyes, throws his scars in high relief. He’s standing—he’s here, right here, close enough to touch, and it’s not like Pete’s never dreamed of this moment, never gone over what she’d say to him if she could, if she had just one more chance, but God, he’s right _here_ and if she moves she’s sure the whole picture will break apart into static. Stuff like this only happens in comics and storybooks, and her life’s been a whole lot of things but a storybook was never one of them. Why start now?

When Yondu’s standing less than three feet away from her. Jaw set hard, the way it always was whenever she played dumb just to piss him off.

“Girl, I’m the one who’s dead and you got no business bein’ here,” he snarls. “So _you_ best be telling _me_ what the hell kind of—”

“Didn’t you ever just call me Pete?”

He breaks off with the trademark Snort of Absolute Disgust. “That what’s on your mind right now? Only that?”

“When I was a kid,” she says. “Didn’t you—” A muscle’s twitching in Yondu’s jaw, he’s glaring at her like she’s the dumbest thing ever snatched off God’s green earth; it’s him. Whether she’s really here or not, he is.

He _is._

“—you know what? Screw it.” Her voice still shaking, her knees about ready to buckle, Pete crosses the glimmering, glassy distance between them in one lopsided step and throws her arms around him. Squeezes as hard as she can, and buries her face in the crook of his shoulder, where it smells like old sweat and old leather, old booze, old blood, old man. Years after, and she hasn’t forgotten it, not this. The smell of home.

“Oh, man,” she mumbles, her squeeze turning into something frantic, choking. “Man, I missed you.”

“Don’t need to tell me that,” Yondu rasps, sounding a little strangled, so she tries to ease off her grip, but she can’t, not yet.  He’s dead anyway and whether she is or isn’t doesn’t matter now. It’s not the point. The point is, she feels his hand on the back of her head, cupping her skull like it’s crystal, worth millions of credits and liable to shatter if you so much as look at it cross-eyed. “Don’t never need to tell me that, girl. All this time, and you still think I don’t know you? You might be slippery as a devil but you sure ain’t got the brains of one.”

_Slippery as a devil, pretty as an angel._

“I wanted you not to know me. You know that’s not the same thing.” A button scrapes against Pete’s jaw and she hisses. “Shit. Least you’ve still got a killer right hook.”

“Lemme see.” He pulls away from her, keeping one hand fastened to her shoulder like he knows Pete will just reach out again, pull him back in, if he doesn’t. Yondu flicks his eyes over her jaw, huffs, “Shoot, that weren’t nothin’ but a lil’ love tap. You’re gettin’ soft, Quill.”

“Dude, that was not a fucking love tap!”

His eyes flick down. “Gettin’ fat, too.”

She resists the urge to suck in her gut for all of two minutes. Oh, well. Thought that counts. “Yeah, so I put on like ten pounds since you saw me last. Big deal.”

“Ten?” Yondu whistles; Pete almost jumps sideways before remembering that the Yaka Arrow is busy bobbing along to Kraglin’s tunes somewhere clear across the galaxy. “Looks more like twenty to me.”

 _“Dude._ I get enough of this shit from Rocket. Isn’t being dead supposed to turn you all warm and fuzzy?”

“Mmm-hmm. Guess it didn’t take.” Yondu doesn’t sound even a little bit regretful. Then again, he almost never did. “How’s the rat?”

Pete bites down on the panic bursting like a bubble in her throat. “I don’t know.”

“And the twig? Your green gal?”

She shakes her head, staring at the ripples that spread outwards from their feet, circling them in ever-widening, never-ending rings. She’d look for a horizon, but there is none. Nothing; all she’s done is slipped into a different kind of nothing.

“Where is this place?”

“It ain’t where you’re stayin’,” he says. “Not for a long time yet.”

A plan. They need a plan. She’s good with plans, isn’t she?

“They’re not staying if I’m not staying.”

Wasn’t she?

“Can’t speak for them, can I?”

“Can’t you? You never did have a problem speaking for me!” _Don’t panic, don’t panic._ “I need to find them, Yondu. I’m getting them out of here.”

“‘Course you are,” he says, and it comes out halfway pissed, halfway resigned, halfway a sneer and halfway a smile. Mostly, it comes out like he wouldn’t expect any less of her. It stops the panic choking her up, at least for a little while.

“You’re going to help me.”

“That so?”

Pete shakes her head. “Can it, old man. We both already know you’d do anything for me.”

“That so,” he repeats. It isn’t quite a question this time. His hand’s still clamped to her shoulder, warm, another anchor. She reaches up, covers it with her own, trembling, sharp, on the edge of screaming or the edge of tears.

He’s here. This isn’t nothing and she’s not alone, not with him.

“Yondu,” she says. The way his name clunks over her tongue, almost unfamiliar, makes her want to die all over again from guilt. But she doesn’t have the time. Enough for this, no more. “I never told you—”

He cuts her off right away. “You don’t need to, Red,” he says, his captain’s tone coming out in full force. Case closed, no questions asked, it is because I say it is and get your ass down here ‘less you want this arrow coming after it. “Never did.”

 _I want to,_ Pete thinks. Doesn’t say so because he already knows. Instead, she dips her head and rests it again, just for a minute, on his shoulder.

“You were everything to me,” says the little kid she once was, the not-quite-dead, definitely-not-alive woman she is now. “I hope you knew that.”

The sun never sets. The  light never changes, never dims. And the ripples spread out, encircling them forever. World without end.

**Author's Note:**

> To anyone who's still reading, I hope you like this one, and thank you so much for sticking with this bonkers little series. In all honesty, the ending feels a little abrupt to me, but I wanted to write something set post-IW and still leave myself room to work with whatever they might have planned for part 2, so I guess a very open end is the price I had to pay. :)
> 
> Title from "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel. 
> 
> You can find me on [ tumblr](https://mapleymood.tumblr.com/) and [ dreamwidth](https://maplemood.dreamwidth.org//). My tumblr tag for inspiration related to this series is [ here](https://mapleymood.tumblr.com/tagged/girl%21peter).


End file.
